Blog
Where I write about writing.
Except that in 2024, I’m writing on Substack.
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Sarah’s blog is now on Substack! Come on over, subscribe and receive irregular updates on how to write more in less time, how to increase your creative flow, writing insights and news from the publishing world.
Three Ways to Improve Your Scenes Right Now
Characterization, action and dialogue are three building blocks that can help you create engaging scenes that come alive in your reader’s mind. Scenes help you to move the story along with less exposition—more showing, less telling.
My First Gift Book Comes Out October 27!
I'm thrilled to announce that P.S. I Love You More Than Tuna, the first illustrated gift book for adults grieving the loss of a companion animal, will be published by Sounds True on October 27. This book has been nearly four years in the making, and I'm so...
Read This Before You Hire an Editor (Including Me)
One of the biggest challenges writers face is navigating the confusion around editing terms. Another is understanding what editors do and, more importantly, what we can't do for you. My fellow freelance editor Chantel Hamilton recently wrote the single most helpful...
Show Don’t Tell: Bringing the Reader into Your Moment
Storytelling is a bit of a misnomer. It’s not about recounting events, but bringing the reader into your body, so they feel what you felt, see what you saw, hear what you heard, etc.
Developing Your Nonfiction Voice: Write Like You Speak
“Write like you speak” is one of the most foundational component of engaging writing. For many writers, though, it can be easier said than done.
Why Authority isn’t the Same as Credibility
Nonfiction writers often believe they have to be an authority on their subject. That’s helpful, but it’s not enough to connect deeply with your readers.
Characterization: Bringing Real People to Life on the Page
Description gives readers a sketch; characterization immerses the reader in in virtual reality. Here’s what you need to know.
How to Bring Readers into an Experience
The core of resonating with readers is writing in a way that evokes a response, either sensory or emotional. This kind of writing triggers readers’ mirror neurons—and mirror neurons are part of what neuropsychologists call the “resonance circuit.”
Using the Hero’s Journey to Create Resonant Nonfiction
The Hero’s Journey isn’t just for screenwriters and novelists. Learn how you can use this timeless structure to create resonant nonfiction.
Cutting Through the Woo
Woo comes from a desire to paint the vision of the world as entirely peace, love and unicorns, with nary a dark thought or fart in sight. But that’s not the world we live in, and—more importantly—that’s not the world your readers live in.
POV, part 2: Alternatives and Constraints
First-person POV has considerable limitations. However, there are ways to work around it, to create a richer, more engaging reading experience.
POV, part 1: Narrative Perspective
POV stands for “point of view,” also known as perspective. POV keeps the reader oriented. It’s a framework that helps the reader interpret what’s being revealed and by whom.
How Resonant Storytelling Weaves Magic and Logic
By weaving together magic and logic, you can engage readers’ hearts as well as their minds—not just one or the other. If you do it well, you can engage their minds in service to their hearts.
The Paradox of Language
The Latin-based languages comprise 26 symbols that, arranged in a mind-boggling array of variation, somehow connect us with one another. It’s pretty awesome, when you think about it. Yet it has limitations. Not only do most words have multiple meanings (like...
The Role of Conflict in Nonfiction
Every young writer is taught that the essence of story is conflict. But “conflict” is a loaded word. Most people see it as negative, confrontational and even violent. But it isn’t, inherently.
The Difference Between Writing and Storytelling
Story includes challenge and conflict and setbacks and triumphs and more setbacks…and eventually, a change. Or many changes. Story is all the drops of water that shape a rock.
Mythology and Resonant Story Structure
The essence of story is change. In fiction, this usually means that something changes in the protagonist’s circumstances and/or awareness or personality. Think of your favorite novel: If nothing changes, if the protagonist doesn’t transform in one way or another, there’s no story.
Why Transformation Matters
The other day, I saw the above photo in my Facebook feed (photo © Kerry Dixon). “Transformation” is a nebulous word, kind of like “sustainability” was a decade ago. Few people identify their primary field as “transformation.” Rather, it crosses multiple sectors, from...
Storytelling and Transformation
Transformative storytelling is as much about the syntax, the language, the word choice, structure and energy underneath the words as it is about the subject. It also has to do with the state in which writing happens. In transformative writing, all the elements work together to evoke an experience in the reader.
On Transformation, Writing and Naming
“What is precious inside us does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence.” – David Whyte Language is a paradox. Words are symbols that can never capture the essence of what they point to, yet at this point in our evolution, words are the...
Creativity and Mindfulness
Novels, J.D. Salinger wrote, grow in the dark. By that, he meant that true creativity comes from the subconscious mind, from allowing ideas time to percolate below our conscious awareness. It’s not just novels, though, that spring forth from the subconscious mind. So do
See the Human
One thing that being a writer teaches you: Everyone has a backstory. Everyone is on their own Hero’s Journey. You are the protagonist of your story, but you’re a supporting-to-background character in others’. Understand, as Buddhists say, that everyone you meet is struggling with something you’ll never know about, and everyone is doing the very best they can in a given moment.
The Law of Increasing Flow
Yes, there is something to the “butt in chair, hands on keyboard” approach to writing. Inspiration often flows after half an hour of clunking around. But knowing when to put your butt in the chair, getting centered before you sit down, significantly increases your chances of using your writing time effectively.
Cinematic Writing
One of the benefits of having worked in so many mediums – print, television, stage, online, stand-alone interactive and film – is that I’ve learned a variety of storytelling techniques that are transferable among platforms. There’s something in the combination of...